A life at sea can bring loneliness and perhaps a bit of insanity, but rituals and rites of passage, like the line-crossing ceremony that accompanies one’s first crossing of the Equator, helped bring the author a sense of belonging and the contentment found in camaraderie. The ceremony is referred to as being an initiation into the court of King Neptune, the Roman god of the sea. The pictured Neptune statue is the city of Lviv, the cultural center of western Ukraine.
